If you had caught a 4-pound speckled trout this summer anywhere in Southeast Louisiana from your kayak, you'd be fishing this weekend in your very own Hobie Outback.

If, of course, you had previously registered for the STAR.

Brendan Bayard didn't run across one that was quite big enough this year, thanks to conditions that were really brutal almost the whole summer long, but he knows what he'll be using to target them next summer -- live pogies.

"Pogies are one of the best baits you can get, but they're really hard to keep alive," he said. "I'll use them one or two trips a year when I'm trying to catch a STAR trout.

"I go out early in the morning with my cast net. A lot of times, you can bait the pogies. If you get there early enough, you can throw out rabbit food or guinea pig food. It'll sink down, and you'll get pogies and shrimp. You'll pull up gobs of them. Typically, I keep about 30."

To stay alive, pogies have to keep moving, but they're not the brightest bulbs in the piscatorial community. Throw them in a baitwell with corners, and they'll stack up there until they suffocate. As such, any baitwell that stores them has to be round.

Bayard said he also adds what he called "pogie crystals."

"It kind of keeps some of the oil they secrete down," he said. "They tend to choke themselves on their own filth."

A good aerator is a necessity, and so is ice to keep the water cool.

Fishing with pogies can certainly be a hassle, Bayard said.

"I do it a couple of times a year until I remember how much I hate it, and then I won't do it again," he said.

The reason he does it that many times, though, is because it's deadly effective.

"The great thing about a pogie as opposed to a croaker is if you throw him toward rocks, he won't swim into the rocks," Bayard said. "A croaker or pinfish will want to just dive for cover. Pogies will just hang around there until they get eaten."